Written for all the players at Sora no Hikari, and especially Athran, simply for being yourself. I hope you like it.
Advancing
"And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more." -Erica Jong
And so this was how it ended, and also how it began. Life and death, twisted and braided together in the green thread holding the green vest together. She'd had it for a long time; she'd made chuunin at age fifteen, after all, but never before had Yamanaka Ino worn it. No, the first time the kunoichi with long golden hair wore her dark green chuunin vest was the day she officially made jounin.
It was after the fact, long after the fact, of course, for it had been four years since she'd last advanced in rank before today, but Ino wore it anyway, because it seemed like the proper thing to do. She wasn't quite sure why she did this, why her thoughts traveled in the direction they had when she'd pulled the heavy green vest out of her over-flowing closet, what her rationale was for wearing it today. She just did, and perhaps there didn't need to be any reason greater than that.
She knew that holding the rank of jounin would mean she'd be taking more dangerous missions, that her chances of dying before her father, as her mother had at only age twenty, would increase almost a thousand-fold. Yamanaka Ino knew the statistics, knew the risks, and she did care. She didn't want to die young; she didn't want to die at all, for the daughter of Inoichi and Momoko loved life more than anything in the world, loved being a part of, and to have that end, to risk it ending, was not something she wanted to do.
But Yamanaka Ino, though she loved life, also loved death, for serving Konoha was her calling, her purpose, almost her obsession. And if Konoha required her to deal in death, then she would do so, for only in death could those whom she protected have life. If there were none to stand for and defend Konoha, for her home, then it would fall, and there would be only death and destruction in the place of life Ino loved so greatly.
So she would take the rank and serve her country, her Hokage, her friends and family, as a jounin, as one of the elite. She would risking death and injury, of both mind and body, and fight, for there was truly no other way, no other path for Ino to tread.
Yamanaka Ino wore her chuunin vest for the first time on the day she made jounin, for it symbolized the death of one thing and the birth of another, even if she wasn't consciously aware of it.